Friday, November 02, 2007

Atom Bomb: President Truman's Press Statement, Aug 6, 1945

From Truman Library online resourses, as available on 1 Nov 2007

The statement says, " With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces".

The statement describes the competetion among the German and US-UK atomic research establishments as the "battle of the laboratories".

Truman writes about the Manhattan project: "We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history - and won." He also describes the project's success as "the greatest achievement of organized science in history".
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A nice documentation about the US decision making process for the first use of atom bomb could be foun d here:http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/70-7_23.htm

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Interestingly today's CNN news informs that the pilot of the B-16 bomber that dropped the first atom bomb has just died at the age of 92.

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